“Does Enchantment Pour Out of Every Door? No! It’s Just on The Street — Where YOU Live.”

I seem to have memorized its every nook, and every speed bump; its every crack on the road. Lord knows I’ve had enough time for that, for I have been walking it; strutting, running, driving — surviving — on it, for nearly six years.

Six years. Who knew I’d last here for so long?

Just a week before I first landed here, I was promising a beloved back in New York:

“I’ll be back in a year. Don’t worry.”

He didn’t: The beloved moved on to another love, and suddenly I had no reason to come back. So, I stayed here — for just a bit longer.

The street on which I live:

By now I know the patterns of its residential parking by heart. This funky red house right here collects vintage cars, taking up quarter of a block for their parking. The Spanish style apartment building at the other end: People are always coming and going there; and if you sit in its driveway long enough, flashing your emergency lights at the rhythm of your heartbeat, you are guaranteed to get a spot sooner or later. You gotta be quick though: Keep flashing the lights and come upon the decked out Hollywood dandy, reeking of cologne, or the unsuspecting Armenian girl getting in her car, for a night on the town.

Pull up, roll down the windows:

“You leaving?”

Try to smile. After all, they don’t owe you jack shit. And if they let you take over their spot, give ‘em room to pull out.

Then, wave:

Gratitude seems to go a long way, around here.

Whatever you do: Don’t park in front of this abandoned structure right here. Because it’s not abandoned: It’ll filled to the brim with emaciated cats and a single resident the face of whom I’ve never seen, for the last six years. At nighttime, a window always lights up in the attic. The front door is barricaded with abandoned furniture. The front yard looks like a field of wild weeds and overgrown bushes.

Still, whatever you do: Don’t park there! That unattended garden with berried trees will kill the paint on your car. And whatever you do: Don’t feed the cats. The sign written in crayon on the front gate says so:

“DON’T FEED CATS. THEIR NOT HOMELESS.”

In my second year, I finally earned an occasional parking spot inside my garage. I had been bouncing between jobs, one more terrible than the other; and after settling for a decent night gig, I negotiated to share a spot with a neighbor: He would work the graveyard shift as a security guard; and by the time, my club closed and I came home with blistered feet, he’d be leaving for work.

In the morning, I’d have to get up, get dressed and re-park on the street, often finding my neighbor under the berried tree, still in uniform, feeding the cats.

“I couldn’t sleep,” he’d explain to me, as if caught redhanded; and his tired face fit for a Native American shaman would make me wonder how he got these emaciated creatures to come out of the house, in the first place.

Curiously, I’d drive around other neighborhoods: funky or cheesy, some parading their wealth, others — their transient despair. I would do that for a week, applying to a couple of New-York-like buildings. But then, I’d come back to my street: That was just my second-year itch. Everyone gets it in LA.

The street on which I live:

The faces of its residents have been tattooed into my memory, even after they move on. And many have moved on. A couple of working girls in my building with decent night gigs: They’d get so tired surviving on this street, and in this city, while waiting for their big break. A few would eventually land a small acting gig — a stand-in for the big break — and they’d move to better places, better streets. Some would leave for their boyfriends’. Others — would go home.

That pretty blonde, who used to be a redhead in the first year of living here: She got her first speaking role on a canceled show.

“It only took five years,” she said to me in my garage, and she scoffed with such scorn, it made me want to move on.

Her roommate, a pretty black girl with extensions and a shaggy dog, had already left. She couldn’t wait for her big break any longer.

That pretty blonde, who used to be a redhead, would be gone within a week.

The security guard with a tired face fit for a Native American shaman would leave too.

The street on which I live:

Some of the faces seem to stay here forever. There is the family of a jeweler — a family of good faces — that lives in a rustic house with wooden furniture. They don’t smile much; but by now, the mother of the house has learned to nod at me, while she waters the lawn at sunset. And the lonely old woman that always knocks on her second story window: She would seem quite sad in her dementia, if she weren’t so childlike. And the handful of Armenian men, selling random goods in their front yards every weekend: They get quiet every time I walk, strut or run by; and they keep smoking their cigars.

The street on which I live:

There seems to be so much humanity here, and so much mercy.

In the gated house directly across from my building, there is supposed to be some sort of a shelter. Another building, half a block up, serves as a home for homeless teenagers and runaways. And than there is that abandoned structure right here: It gives shelter to the forsaken cats. But at least,

“THEIR NOT HOMELESS.”

And at the end of last week, someone had made a new shoefiti: At the intersection that leads to my street, a pair of Dorothy’s sparkling ruby slipper was thrown over a telephone line. Some say these shoes are meant to be stolen or unwanted. And sometimes, they belong to a departed.